THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING TO IMPROVE STUDENT’S VOCABULARY MASTERY OF THE FIRST GRADE STUDENT AT MAN KUTOWINANGUN IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2013/2014

Abstract

As an international language, English is one of the most important for communication in the world. Language is an instrument of human being in society.Vocabulary is an important language component to be taught to support the language skills. To make the teaching of English vocabulary at Senior High School meaningful and really able to raise the students’ vocabulary mastery, teachers should use an effective method in order to make students interested. The researcher believes that by using Inquiry-Based Learning the students will be more active in the class and easier to motivate in improving their English vocabulary. The aim of this research is to find out whether teaching using Inquiry-Based Learning is effective to improve students’ vocabulary mastery of the first grade students at MAN Kutowinangun in the academic year 2013/2014 or not. The type of the research is experimental research. The population of this research is the first grade students of MAN Kutowinangun in the academic year 2013/2014. The sample of this research is two classes which are divided into experimental group (X.2, 30 students) and control group (X.4, 30 students). The sampling technique which is used is purposive sampling technique. The researcher then analyzed the data statistically by using t-test. The result of the research found that the using of Inquiry-Based Learning is effective to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery. The highest score from the whole score – both experimental and control, and both pre and post test – was 80. The highest score was gotten by the student in experimental group after getting the treatment. Then the lowest score was 50, it was gotten by the students in control group. After doing the test, the Mean scores were found that the pre-test mean of the experimental group was 63.83, and the post-test was 72. Moreover, the mean pre-test of the control group was 61.83, and the post-test was 63.50. The computation of t-test shows that the Ha is accepted. It can be proven by the value of t – test is 5.18. Then the t – table is 2.021. The computation shows that the t - value is higher than t – table (5.18>2.021). Thus, the alternative hypothesis can be stated that it is effective to using Inquiry-Based Learning to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery of the first grade students at MAN Kutowinangun in the academic year 2013/2014.